


Happy Father's Day

by AlejandroAsher



Category: Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe - Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Genre: Adoption, Father's Day, Flashbacks, Fluff, Implied Sexual Content, Kissing, M/M, One Shot, Short One Shot, Surprises
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-21
Updated: 2020-06-21
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:54:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24831184
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlejandroAsher/pseuds/AlejandroAsher
Summary: Dante hands his husband an envelope containing a wonderful Father's Day surprise.
Relationships: Aristotle Mendoza/Dante Quintana
Comments: 9
Kudos: 51





	Happy Father's Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lostintheverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lostintheverse/gifts).
  * Translation into Español available: [Feliz Día del Padre](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25600258) by [AlejandroAsher](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlejandroAsher/pseuds/AlejandroAsher)



> *joyfully skips onto the website holding this fic in hand*
> 
> Hi! I'm back with yet another Aridante ficlet. I really hope you guys enjoy this one; it's longer than the previous one I wrote, entitled [_nicknames_](https://www.archiveofourown.org/works/23672965), but it's still not long enough that I would put it as a whole chapter in a longfic, so I'm posting it here as an individual work. It's a cute little Father's Day drabble and a peek into what Ari and Dante might do when deciding whether or not to become parents.
> 
> By the way, I have _more than a few_ ~~three~~ Aridante longfic ideas, one of which is a royalty AU, and another one of which happens to be a _The Good Place_ crossover, so let me know if you like this so that I know I might have an audience when I begin posting those! <3 Please leave comments if you want to and if you like it; comments are my favorite thing ever. You're not bothering me, seriously; I've never understood people who say they didn't comment for so long because they didn't want to be a nuisance.
> 
> Lastly, this is dedicated to my friend lostintheverse. Please go check out his longfics _once you discover the secrets of the universe, the universe looks different_ and _The day after (and the day after that)_. He's an awesome writer. :)
> 
> Happy reading and Happy Father's Day!

**Aristotle Mendoza**

Sunday mornings are always so pretty, what with the light from the sunrise filtering in through the blinds, illuminating everything in the living room in a warm glow, and the green grass and leaves on trees and kids playing catch with their dads out in the streets and the white fluffy clouds overhead. It’s a beautiful day, but I certainly don’t feel it as much as everyone else does.

I’m envious as hell of those kids out in the streets, playing with their fathers. They have fathers. Those fathers have kids. Fuck you all, you happy people with whole, complete families. Fuck you and your children, I don’t need to see all of your happiness out in broad daylight--especially now, on Father’s Day. Fuck you all.

I close the blinds with a frown on my face and suddenly realize I must look like a grumpy old man with how disheveled my messy, unwashed brown hair is and the white A-shirt I’m wearing. I sigh and head for the bathroom, resolving to take a shower. I’ve forgotten to do so these past few days, what with all the moping around I’ve been doing. Miraculously, Dante doesn’t seem to mind when I smell funky. He still regularly kisses me impurely and takes my hand and leads me to our bedroom whenever he’s had more than one glass of wine. That man really loves me.

As I peel off my clothes in front of the bathroom mirror, I think about the two months or so ago that Dante and I had a conversation about being fathers. Having kids. Adoption, surrogacy. It’s a conversation that every couple should have at some point, but it’s also one that many tend to avoid. Some people break up or divorce simply because their significant other didn’t want kids. I had never pictured myself being a dad, and I didn’t really ever find myself really wanting to be one--at least, as a teenager, I didn’t.

But then Dante came along.

There was one night we slept over at my house together. As boyfriends, my house and the Quintanas’ house basically became extensions of one another. I would go to his house all the time and he would come to mine all the time, to the point where my and Dante’s wardrobes began mixing with one another, and the only way to tell what belonged to who was to look at the tag to find out the size.

Mrs. Quintana was about eight months pregnant with Dante’s baby brother, Joaquin. I had just turned seventeen a while ago, and Dante and I were going into our senior year of high school--not at the same school, unfortunately. I wrapped my arms around Dante and pulled him close, and then kissed the top of his head, savoring every bit of heat that emanated from my boyfriend. I’d gotten used to pulling Dante close to me for warmth, since he was (still is) a fucking blanket hog. It had been pretty easy for me to fall asleep easily, but it wasn’t for Dante.

At an ungodly hour of the morning, Dante shook me awake. “Ari. Ari. Ari!”

I was startled at how alarmed he seemed. “What? Dante, are you okay? What’s wrong?” I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, reaching over to my nightstand to turn on the lamp.

“We need to talk about something,” he said breathlessly. He sounded like he just came back from running with me and Legs early in the morning.

I ran a hand through his hair and another up and down his back. “What is it? How come you’re freaking out?”

Dante swallowed, ran his hands across his face, then finally exhaled and looked at me. “Do you want to have kids?”

My eyebrows furrowed at his odd and sudden question. “What?”

“Do you want to have kids?” The look in his eyes denoted anxiousness and almost made him look unhinged.

I opened my mouth and then closed it. I just ended up stammering. Finally, I was able to say, “I don’t know. I’ve never really thought about it before.”

Dante let out a breath and raked his nails through his scalp. His demeanor was seriously worrying me. “Baby, what’s  _ wrong?  _ Why are you like this?”

“‘Cause,” Dante said, “I need to know if you want to have kids or not before…”

I tilted my head in confusion until I realized what the rest of his sentence was: “before I commit to you.”

Dante had pined after me for over a year, and when I had finally realized that I reciprocated his feelings, we’d been inseparable. Breaking up over something like this seemed… so dumb to me. Tragic, really. I didn’t want it to happen, didn’t even want to consider the possibility. Truth be told, I had never foreseen a reality in which Dante and I might not end up together forever--not after everything we had been through.

I exhaled. “You really want kids, don’t you?” I figured it made total sense. Dante was lovable and caring and sweet and nice, and ever since his mother got pregnant he wasn’t able to shut up about having a baby brother. You would think that Dante was his father if you didn’t know he was his brother. It was so, so easy to envision Dante as a caring father--the best damn dad in the world. And I wouldn’t have wanted to deprive him of that experience just ‘cause I didn’t know what I wanted.

Dante nodded. I could tell tears were threatening to spill all over his eyes.

I put my hands on his face and wiped away the two tears that had now fallen on his face. “We can have kids if you want,  _ mi amor.”  _

Dante tilted his head and his eyes widened a bit in surprise. “Really?”

I nodded. “Yeah.”

He thought for a moment, staying silent, before he said, “I don’t want you to do this just to make me happy. I want to know you  _ want _ to have kids.”

Then it was my turn to think. I pondered what it would be like if I were a father for a while. How good a dad was my own father? Not fantastic, but I loved him. He had just come back from a war when I was born, after all--how much of his distance from me can I blame on him as a person? He’d gotten way better after he and Mom sat me down and told me I was in love with Dante after he’d told me an awful war story that haunts his nightmares. He had talked to me. That was nice. I was happy when he talked to me.

I don’t like to talk.

I’ve never liked it, and I never saw a reality in which I would like it. But of course, Dante has broken me. Torn down all the walls I had surrounding me. Became the only person in the world who wasn’t scared of me, the only one who was willing to deal with all my shit and eventually became the only one who was crazy enough to say yes when I knelt on one knee and asked if he wanted a sparkly ring, on the condition that he never leave me alone.

“I don’t know if kids are something I really  _ want,” _ I started, and when the words came out of my mouth I realized they sounded awful. I quickly followed up with, “but I don’t think anyone else our age has thought about that. But hey” --I touched his chin and lifted his face up to mine-- “your baby brother’s on the way. Maybe I can start to think about it,  _ amor.” _

Dante smiled, finally. Finally. Let the world rejoice, for Dante has smiled. Then he squeezed my hands. “As long as you promise me that you’ll tell me if you really want kids or not.”

“Of course.” I squeezed back. “I’ll never lie to you, Dante.”

Dante kissed my knuckles.

That happened six years ago.

We seldom mentioned our future children after that, except for the instances in which I would be babysitting Joaquin or feeding him his baby formula or playing with him or reading him a story and Dante would stand to the side, saying  _ aww _ and “you’re going to be such a good father.” But those aren’t really conversations.

The next real conversation would come roughly two months ago, over breakfast. Dante served me the waffles he made (they weren’t difficult to make; he always bought the easy microwave shit ‘cause he hates cooking), and as he sat down at the kitchen table across from me, he uttered a question: “Do you still want to have kids, Ari?”

My eyebrows furrowed as my fork dug into my waffle. “Of course, Dante. You know how much fun it was for me, raising Joaquin.”

Dante smiled at my choice of words. Of course, I wasn’t the only one who  _ raised  _ him--Dante’s parents obviously deserved ninety-nine percent of the credit for however he turns out. “Yes, it was very fun watching you being so sweet with him. But I need to know more than just that you want to have kids.”

“What else do you need to know?”

“Do you want to get a surrogate or do you want to adopt?”

It was a question that hadn’t occurred to me. Of course, I knew that I couldn’t impregnate Dante-- which was probably a good thing, given how many times we sneak off to the desert and wind up in the backseat twenty seconds later completely naked, we probably would’ve accidentally given birth to ten bastards by now-- but that never stopped me from envisioning that our child was going to be a perfect mix of the two of us. My mind decided to paint a picture of a baby with my appearance and physical qualities and Dante’s temperament and personality. It just popped into my mind once and I never questioned it.

But I knew that unless it was Dante’s sperm and either Cecilia or Sylvia’s egg (if they could even still get pregnant at this point? Were they too old? I knew nothing about women), then there was basically no way that the baby would be able to share both our genes.

The thought of one of my sisters carrying my son for nine months unsettled me. I didn’t know why. Of course, if either one of them had wanted to do it, I would’ve been eternally grateful, but it just felt wrong. They had already had kids of their own, meaning they’d both been pregnant before… it almost made me feel uncomfortable. And hiring a surrogate? I didn’t want a stranger in charge of making sure my baby was conceived properly.

Dante listened to me rant about the problems with surrogacy that I saw for several minutes before he came at me with his rebuttal. “Well, it doesn’t  _ have _ to be a perfect stranger,” Dante said. “You could ask Gina or Susie.”

“Over my fucking corpse,” I said instantly, and we both busted out laughing.

“Okay, think of it this way,” Dante continued when we finally calmed down. “If we get a surrogate, and it’s your sperm, that baby would be  _ super _ hot. Seriously, what a waste it would be to not pass on your shoulders, or your arms, or your eyes, or your jawline, or your hair, or your teeth, or your d--”

“Dante,” I’d exclaimed loudly and suddenly to get him to snap out of it. Compliments still made me nervous, especially an abrupt barrage of them. “You really think with  _ my _ genes, that baby would have everything?”

“Of course! Look at you!” Dante exclaimed, standing up out of his chair. “Even after all these years, you still look like you stepped out of a Calvin Klein ad!”

I smiled and scoffed and turned my head back down to my waffles. “Sit your thirsty ass down.”

Dante sat.

_ “Maybe _ that baby would be hot,” I say. “But I think it would be better to have a hot baby who was  _ smart, _ too.”

“Oh, don’t even start--”

I barely gave him a chance to interrupt. “You were the one who was arguing at 15 that comic books were not literature,” I began immediately. “And you were reading Tolstoy at the same age. If you hadn’t come into my life I would’ve dropped out of school, I swear to God. No one will care if he’s smart if he’s also ugly, sweetheart.”

Dante furrowed his eyebrows and stared me down. “Are you trying to get laid right now?”

I burst into laughter and set my fork down. “No! I’m just being  _ honest!” _

“It’s not  _ honest _ to say you’re ugly!”

“Well, it’s not honest to say you’re not smart!”

I sighed loud and long. “If we get a surrogate, it should be your sperm.”

“No, it should be  _ yours!” _

“Well, who the hell are we going to put my sperm in? Your sister?!”

That shut Dante up, ‘cause he didn’t have a sister.

“I think we should adopt,” he said finally.

I sighed a second time. “Alright, fine. If we can’t agree on who’s hotter and smarter,” I said, getting up from the kitchen table with my now-empty plate and giving Dante a kiss on the forehead as I walked to the counter, “then we can adopt a kid that needs a home.”

Dante smiled wide--at the way I had phrased adoption, I think.

Now I stand here, in the shower, the cold water raining down upon me as I wonder why the crying fuck it’s so hard to adopt kids. Especially as a gay couple. Oh God, if only people knew how many kids would still be left in the system if they let all the wanting gay couples adopt kids (the answer is zero). We’ve been laughed at, ignored, turned away. I’ve punched two holes in our headboard ever since we decided to adopt. I’ve become grumpy again, just like when I was 15 immediately before I met Dante.

Dante says it’s not a good color on me. 

He’s been doing everything he can to be the strong, loving, forgiving one who doesn’t get pissed whenever an opportunity to adopt falls through, but I can tell it’s starting to get to him too. He’s the one who wanted to be a dad in the first place; I can only imagine what it’s like.

Is this what straight couples feel like when they’ve been trying to conceive for months to no avail? Probably not, because their eggs and sperm don’t hate them for being gay.

I exhale and grab the shampoo, deciding that brooding around in the shower won’t do me any good. And it’ll only drive the water bill through the roof. I start shampooing my hair and getting on with the shower.

* * *

“So you’re very happy this morning,” I observe as I’m putting my clothes back on while Dante watches me with a starstruck sparkle in his eyes. “Why so cheery?”

Dante had jumped my bones immediately after I got out of the shower. He was just waking up, and he already had the biggest smile on his face. It would seem that seeing me half-naked stepping out of the shower only improved his mood. Then he led me to our bedroom.

As Dante puts his own shirt back on, he says, “I got some good news in the mail recently.”

“In the mail?”

“Yeah,” Dante says, grabbing a new pair of boxer shorts from the dresser and putting a pair of basketball shorts on. “Come on. I think you’ll be interested.”

Dante leads me into the living room, where there is a bouquet of red roses and an envelope with my name on it on the coffee table.  _ Maybe he woke up earlier than I thought he did. _ “Sit down,” Dante says, patting the sofa cushion, and I do.

He grabs the envelope from the table and hands it to me. “What is it?” I ask him.

“Open it,” he tells me.

“What is it?” I repeat, beginning to open the envelope.

“Open and you’ll find out.”

I make a  _ tsk _ noise with my mouth as I finish tearing open the envelope. I’m holding my breath now, but I’m not sure why. Given Dante’s cheery demeanor and the roses and his horniness from just a few moments ago, it has to be a good thing. Right?

I do not exhale when I unfold the adoption papers inside and read them.

My eyes go as big as pie plates and my heart seems to stop beating for a few moments as I absorb all the information written out in ink on these pages. It doesn’t seem real, the fact that I’m holding these papers in my hands that say that Dante and I are going to adopt an unborn baby boy upon his expected birth next month.

“I-”

“You’re going to be a father,” Dante says, his smile the widest it’s ever been--and that’s a high bar.

I smile, and then I laugh. And then tears start to fall down from my eyes, and fuck knows I hate crying, but I don’t care. I don’t care, because I’m going to be a father, because Dante is going to raise a baby with me, and we’re going to be a family.

I kiss my husband with a passion paralleled only by our wedding night, and I rake my nails through his scalp and lose myself once again in how amazing it feels to have this man by my side. There’s a million questions at the tip of my tongue, and it occurs to me that we suddenly have a million things to do--we have to prepare a nursery, learn how to do CPR, read a thousand books on parenting--but right now I live in the moment. I focus on the feel of Dante’s lips against my own and the fact that now that we’re finally,  _ finally _ going to adopt a kid that needs a home, that needs two loving parents, everything’s going to be okay.

“Happy Father’s Day,” Dante whispers in my ear.

**Author's Note:**

> Few things I forgot to include when I originally posted this like 5 minutes ago (lol): 
> 
> 1\. I headcanon that Dante's baby brother's name was Joaquin cuz in that scene where Dante was listing the names he liked, Joaquin was the one I liked the most.  
> 2\. I fixed a grammatical error I hadn't spotted prior lol. Oops.


End file.
